On the first morning of evaluation week that fall, Cadet Mara Ellison stood in the back row of a formation that stretched across the entire parade ground, looking so unremarkable that most instructors barely registered her presence.
Which, if you had asked her privately, was exactly the point.
She was smaller than most of the other cadets, her dark hair tied into a tight bun that never seemed to move no matter how hard the wind tried to unravel it. Her uniform always looked correct but somehow slightly rumpled by the end of the day, as though she spent too much time running obstacle courses and not enough time worrying about presentation.
And then there were her scores.
For 127 days they had been consistently mediocre.
Not disastrous.
Not impressive.
Just barely acceptable.
Her marksmanship numbers hovered stubbornly in the bottom third of the roster.
Her endurance runs lagged behind the pack by a frustrating margin.
